And this is where I had an idea: what if I took advantage of the notch bar to build what is, effectively, a virtual Stream Deck featuring buttons with different colors and glyphs that I can click to run my favorite shortcuts, no matter the app I’m currently using?Īs it turns out, BetterTouchTool’s alpha version makes this very easy to do. The integration goes both ways: there are BetterTouchTool actions in Shortcuts, but you can also run shortcuts directly from BetterTouchTool as actions associated with a trigger. Personally, I’m not bothered by the notch on the 14” MacBook Pro I’m testing, but I’ve been intrigued by the notch bar for another reason: it’s the most effective solution I’ve found to build a system-wide, visual Shortcuts launcher that doesn’t require memorizing multiple hotkeys to run different shortcuts.Īs we covered in MacStories Selects, we believe BetterTouchTool’s deep integration with Shortcuts for Mac is the best new app feature of 2021. In my opinion, this is a more interesting and practical approach than covering up the notch with a black menu bar.

With the notch bar, you can design visual triggers – giving them a custom icon powered by SF Symbols (or an image), color, and label – and “get rid” of the notch by turning it into a horizontal strip of commands that is always sitting on top of your windows. Specifically, the notch bar lets you add custom buttons that can launch any BetterTouchTool action to the left side of the menu bar, replacing an application’s default menu system. The difference is that BetterTouchTool’s notch bar turns that empty space into something useful. However, since I believe the notch bar is one of the most exciting developments in the Shortcuts for Mac ecosystem lately, and since I’m having so much fun with it, I figured it’d be worth an early hands-on preview before the end of the year.Īt a high level, the notch bar was inspired by all those utilities that let you add a black menu bar to the latest generation of MacBook Pros with a notch. This feature is currently available as an optional alpha update in BetterTouchTool, and it’s still rough around the edges, so don’t consider this short post a full review of it I’m sure we will revisit this functionality more in depth over the course of 2022. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing around with (and thoroughly enjoying) BetterTouchTool’s latest major feature: the notch bar.

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